TWO SIX-LETTER WORDS THAT SPELL CRUCIFIXION OK, three.
Let me tell you the two six-letter words now so you can determine whether or not you want to keep reading this week’s 52 Week Plan installment. One is “submit” and the other is “suffer”. See what I was telling you? Know that I am not going to beat us up with guilt about submission or suffering. I want to point to Jesus Christ, and perhaps we can take a closer look at His responses to both of these six-letter-S-words. The truth is we are to be ready to “give an answer for the hope that lies with us”. Right? I Peter 3: 15 reveals that we are to be ready, and when we do give an answer to people about the hope that lies within us, we are to do so with “gentleness and respect”.
Well, of course that makes sense, and so does verse 16: “keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.” In other words our life and lips need to say the same things about Jesus. Did you see that? Both six-letter words are introduced in just two verses. Submit tells us to be gentle and respectful in our answer. Suffer reveals itself in the way others may treat us when we stand or stand up for Jesus in some overt way.
Consider our Savior Jesus Christ. Be still for the next few moments and allow them to turn into as many moments as you can afford to focus on the submission and suffering or our Lord Jesus Christ. Imagine if you can what it was like for Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. (These accounts will help us – Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46; John 18:1-11)
I will add one more six-letter word for our consideration and experience: ” sorrow”. Do you feel sorrow for Jesus? Do you feel some of the sorrow He must have felt as He agonized in prayer, alone with disciples near but asleep, realizing the death He was about to die and the suffering He was bound to feel – physical, emotional, and spiritual? What did He say to His Father in prayer, “Not my will but your will be done”?
We may never be asked to suffer this way, but we will suffer forms of rejection and persecution as we follow Jesus Christ. We may never experience the depth of the sorrow He felt as “a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief”, but you already know sorrow in your life, don’t you? The question remains: Will we submit to our Father? Will we live for Him, stand up for Him, and even be willing to stand alone – loving others who don’t love back, in being humble and respectful to those who are neither humble nor respectful.
No better offering can we bring to Jesus on this Easter weekend than to live our life in humble submission yielding to His Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth and loves others through us when we are powerless to do so on our own. Suffer? Probably. Sorrow? Probably Submit? You decide.